Mobile Suit Black Gundam Chapter 3
by Kochiha Ichihara
Summary: This is starting to flow really well! The Leaf Squadron encounters their first real combat.


3: Attack of Opporitunity

The _Astral_ was an anomaly among flashy mercenary transports. She was nothing more than an old cargo ship that tripped back and forth from colony to colony to Earth before her remodeling. Her cargo holds were demolished and converted into a mobile suit hangar and catapults and guns were almost grafted on in addition, all part of an opportunistic weapons company and the rag-tag team of pilots and mechanics that was slowly becoming their face.

The situation flicked across Tsunekazu's mind as he glanced around his quarters, a blank room with a mattress just thrown on the floor. He chuckled.

_What a sight we must be,_ he thought. _But I'm sure the Gundams will give them something to look at! Ha!_

He finished pulling on his pilot suit. It was just a test pilot suit he had "borrowed" from Fortuna, and it didn't fit him very well. It pinched at the neck, wrists, and hands, and he felt pretty stiff in it. Perhaps he would get a new one fitted for himself later, but for now it would have to do. At least the helmet fit okay; that had come with the Black Gundam to properly adapt with the onboard psicom system, a unit he didn't fully understand yet.

There was a knock at his door.

"Come in!" Tsunekazu shouted.

It was Tahkruvas. He was wearing his old pilot suit, which he had had since his first job with the Mobile Defense Force. It was flamboyant and shimmering, colored a bright red with a yellow flame pattern along the ends of the sleeves and the bottom of the vest. His "heraldry", as he referred the crossed fist-clenched swords on his chest, glimmered with gold inlay. Stitched to the suit were a series of small patches shaped like skulls—kill markers—and a medal for "meritorious action".

"We're nearing the objective," he reported. "You ready yet?"

"Just about," Tsunekazu replied. "How about the Gundams?"

"Ready to launch, according to me." Tahkruvas jerked his thumb behind him. "The mechanics want to check your AMBAC systems again, but there just isn't time."

"Let's just hope you know what you're doing," said Tsunekazu, "or we're going to be in a right state."

"One look at your quarters and _anyone_ would think we're in a right state!" joked Tahkruvas. "Anyway, now that you have your suit on, let's get rolling."

With a light kick, Tsunekazu was floating just above the floor, following Tahkruvas out into the corridor. The sheer mass of the _Astral_ gave a slight sense of gravity, but it wasn't enough to hold down a human. For someone like Tsunekazu, who had spent most of his life on Earth, the lack of gravity was a tad disorienting. It wasn't as bad as the queasiness he had experienced on the shuttle ride up, but it still bothered him. He'd have to get used to it for the mission at hand.

The Leaf Squadron's said mission was simple: intercept and if possible eliminate a marauding NGEA strike force consisting of four Guelff-a's, last seen in the area around the small colony Geb. Next, infiltrate and liberate the colony, which was currently used by NGEA to develop mobile armor. From there, the order from the Mobile Defense Force was to "operate independently, doing whatever you can to bring down NGEA". Their payment was the standard rate of a Mobile Defense Force sergeant times three each, a generous but very necessary sum.

Tsunekazu had come up with a plan that involved the _Astral_ providing fire support while being wary of the colony, but the crew wasn't so enthusiastic about the idea. Their first instinct when combat erupted was to get out of there as soon as possible, and that was one thing the _Astral_ was equipped for: speed. Tsunekazu was finally able to convince them after much deliberation, but the condition was that they were responsible to anything that happened to the ship. Unlike the crew, Tsunekazu was confident, and with Tahkruvas fighting with him he was certain that popping off four of NGEA's workhorses would be simple.

"Thinking hard?" Tahkruvas spoke up.

"Well, _some_one has to make up for you!" Tsunekazu joked.

Tahkruvas laughed. "Excuse me for being the one who got us into space!"

They laughed together for a second, then stopped abruptly as the general alarm suddenly went off.

"Huh?! What now?" Tahkruvas was rather startled.

"Let's find out," said Tsunekazu, calling the bridge on one of the intercoms in the corridor.

"This is Igarashi to bridge. Captain, why is the general alarm sounding?"

"We have a proximity alert," replied the Captain, a woman named Sophia Chuang. "Four mobile suits approaching from the front. I suppose this is meant by sneaking up on them, Squadron Commander?"

"No worries, Captain," assured Tsunekazu. "This just saves us the trouble of finding them. We'll launch right away." He hung up the intercom. "You hear that, Tahk?"

"Right!" They leapt to the hangar's entrance.

"Are the Gundams ready?" Tahkruvas shouted.

"All set!" yelled a mechanic. "We managed to get the diagnostic on Black Gundam's AMBAC, too!"

"What's the status?" It was Tsunekazu's turn to shout.

"It's well-patched, but sketchy!" replied the mechanic. "We'll rewrite the system while you're out!"

"Thanks! Now get us ready for launch!"

The two pilots jumped up to the cockpits of their respective mobile suits. Their helmets were inside, all plugged in and ready. They underwent the same startup routine as before and gave the go-ahead to the launch crews.

"Black Gundam to right catapult, Flaming Gundam to left!" clipped the voice of the mobile coordinator on the bridge. "Both mobile suits, proceed to catapults now!"

The Gundams slid upwards until they were at the catapult level. There, the restraints came off and the Gundams slid in opposite directions until they popped out of the hatches and onto the catapults in open space. On the right side, Tsunekazu brought the Black Gundam into a squatting position, ready to launch.

"Tsunekazu Igarashi, Black Gundam--launch!"

There was a sudden lurch as the catapults surged forward. The force was so great Tsunekazu could hardly breathe for a minute. A sudden thud, and the Black Gundam was out in space, flying away from the _Astral_ on inertia alone.

"Black Gundam to Flaming Gundam, d'you read?" voxed Tsunekazu to Tahkruvas.

"I read you," his friend replied. "You get out alright?"

"Just fine," said Tsunekazu. "Now follow me and await further orders".

"Roger!"

Inside the cockpit of his Guelff-a, an indicator on Shavo's control panel went off; something was close, and it was other than that transport they had spied coming too close to Geb-1.

"Lieutenant Sergio!" he voxed. "There's a new sensor track coming up, I think it's a couple of mobile suits!"

"Hm, so they're going to put up a fight, eh?" said Sergio. "Very well. Jonathan, Daron, did you two hear that?"

"I saw it as well," replied Daron. "They're mobile suits, and there are definitely two of them."

"Jonathan, Shavo, break off and get a flank on those two suits," Sergio ordered. "Daron, you come with me."

"Sir!" clipped the three pilots' voices, and two of the four Guelffs broke off.

Sergio squinted at his main monitor as he saw the two mobile suits come up. Where had he seen that design before?

"There they are," voxed Tsunekazu to Tahkruvas when he finally saw the four Guelffs.

"And those two just broke off," Tahkruvas added. "I'll take those two up front, back me up."

"Go get 'em, tiger."

"Kindly don't ever say that again."

And with that, Tahkruvas sped off to meet the two Guelffs. Tsunekazu hung back and took out his main weapon: a large, medium-powered beam rifle with a rectangular barrel. A sensor display appeared on his helmet visor, corresponding with the various indicators on his main monitor. They indicated the two Guelffs, the Flaming Gundam, and an additional two targets coming in from the side.

_Tahk can take those two on his own, _Tsunekazu thought. Then, swinging the Black Gundam to his left, he spotted the Guelff, heading right for him. Colored the 16th Company's standard issue red, it was a very modern mobile suit, with a barely noticeable head unit among a pair of tall spikes on its shoulders. The arms were spindly and lightly armored, ending in sets of three claws rather than hands. The legs were thicker in size and armor, and contained the suit's main thrusters. The chest and cockpit were well-armored; Guelffs had relatively large generators to power their beam weapons—weapons that rendered even their thick armor useless.

Weapons that the Black Gundam had as well. Swiveling the stick in his right hand, he lined up the crosshairs on his visor with the Guelff on his main monitor, locking on fairly quickly. As he did, the Black Gundam's right arm pointed a large beam rifle at the incoming Guelff. He tapped the fire control, a button just under his forefinger, and the rifle fired. It was nothing too glamorous; one second, one shot, one kill, proof of the said firepower of beam weaponry. Another kick of the pedals below his feet, and the Black Gundam swung to the right and shot the second Guelff, just as it shot at him with the beam gun held in its claw and missed. This one was a little closer, so Tsunekazu actually felt the shock of the explosion, rattling a few of the more delicate sensors and putting some static on his monitors for a few seconds.

"Tsun, you were wavering for a minute there, everything okay?" voxed Tahkruvas.

"Just a little aftershock, I'm alright," replied Tsunekazu. "How about you?"

"I got one, but this last one got away with a missing leg. I thought you were keeping me backed up!"

"There were two more back here!"

"Damn it! Now we've let one get away!"

"He won't get far with that kind of damage. Follow him!" Tsunekazu started to flip a few switches, reconfiguring a few settings for the use of another little setting the Black Gundam had. He then switched vox channels. "_Astral_, follow us!"

Upon arrival at the lowly asteroid of a colony the industrial Geb-1, the _Astral_ found itself under fire once again.

"Seems that Guelff-a found its way back quick enough to warn the colony of our presence," Captain Chuang speculated on the _Astral's_ bridge.

"One of two things I didn't expect," replied Tahkruvas. "Their defenses sure have sprouted since the last time I was here."

"Far too thick for us, too," said Tsunekazu. "I'm thinking we should pull back and reassess before we engage here at all."

"What are you talking about? The _Astral_ has enough firepower," argued Tahkruvas. "Outfitted with two of those older rails, four large beam-driven units…yeah, we have more than enough to take out this defense grid."

"Is that true, _Astral_?" Tsunekazu said to Captain Chuang after a quick switch of vox channels.

"That should be the case, Tsunekazu," the captain replied. "But you are right in that this is some heavy firepower we're up against." At this point, the _Astral_'s mobile coordinator, Echs Waters, chimed in.

"I suggest that you two come 'round to point 2-8-0 and try to neutralize at least the missile launchers closest to that loading dock," he said.

"Roger that," replied Tsunekazu. "Tahk, take the position that Mr. Waters suggested."

"You got it." The two Gundams swung around to the specified point, dodging a massive array of missiles, slugs, and the occasional weak particle beam, the latter of which was weak enough to be deflected by the minor disruption field projected by the Black Gundam's thick and elongated hexagonal shield. One of these hit the Flaming Gundam, rattling Tahkruvas' circuitry for a second. He was struck by a missile the next.

"Tahk!" cried Tsunekazu. "You all right?"

"I'm fine!" called back Tahkruvas as Flaming Gundam emerged unscathed. "This armor's every bit as good as Fortuna said it is!"

"Great! Then we'll move on ahead," said Tsunekazu. "_Astral_, covering fire! We're breaking into Geb-1!"

"Roger!" replied Sophia before switching her channel to give orders to the crew. "Main guns, open fire on Geb-1's defenses!" she ordered. "Helmsman, watch for incoming fire! Thirteen to port!"

Aboard the _Astral_, two 220mm railguns mounted just under and to either side of the bridge turned to align themselves with a pair of the closest visible gun batteries nearest the sealed entrance to Geb-1's interior. Along the ship, four two-barreled 90mm beam turrets slowly appeared from compartments just inside the hull; two along the center line, between the catapult launchers, and two on either side. All but the port side beam turret took aim along with the railguns, and fired.

Instantly, immense explosions rocked Geb-1. Not only a set of anti-ship turrets were destroyed, but an ammunition dump had gone with them, causing significant damage to the AA turrets surrounding the colony entrance and the entrance's blast door itself—damage that the Gundam pilots were quick to notice.

"I'm pretty sure I can punch through that!" Tahkruvas exclaimed, pointing out the crippled blast door.

"Go for it, Tahk," approved Tsunekazu. "I'll take care of those remaining turrets."

"Right!" Tahkruvas stomped his feet on the pedals in his cockpit, sending Flaming Gundam into a mad charge at the colony entrance. He only had to dodge the small beam turrets at the entrance for a short time before three well-placed shots from the Black Gundam destroyed them. As Flaming Gundam neared the entrance, Tahkruvas drew his right stick back, pulling Flaming Gundam's balled fist into position, thumbing the control used to heat the thermal charge in that hand to a potent level. Right as he was about to hit the blast door, he slammed the stick forward, hitting home a well-placed, heat-charged punch at the blast door. It gave quickly, shattering into massive steel chunks that slammed into the pair of Guelffs left standing there. One of them exploded, tearing open the second set of doors leading into the colony and blowing Flaming Gundam, which Tahkruvas had managed to land on its feet, back out into space.

Tsunekazu zoomed forward, opening the Black Gundam's wing binders to give him a bit more thrust. He had seen the explosion that had sent his friend's mobile suit suddenly flying out of the entrance it had just burst into, and he quickly caught the Flaming Gundam before it blundered into the path of an oncoming missile barrage. Turning around, he flipped a switch to the right of his left stick, opening up four compartments on the Black Gundam's chest area, forming an inverted trapezoid around the cockpit. Four 60mm blaster cannons similar to the two on the Black Gundam's head now peeked out. With a tap of the triggers under both of his ring fingers, he fired these four blaster cannons along with the two on the head. He was just in time to pump enough bullets into the stream of missiles before they could make their way to the _Astral_. The ones he didn't hit were set off by the ones that were, and the resulting explosive bursts of light rattled a beam turret Tsunekazu had somehow missed. He turned Black Gundam's head around using a little knob on his right stick and pressed it in, firing the pair of blaster cannons on the Black Gundam's head and dispatching the stunned turret.

"Thanks for that," said Tahkruvas before zipping back into the colony entrance.

"No problem. It's a good thing we have synced computers." Tsunekazu was referring to a wireless link between the Black Gundam's and Flaming Gundam's onboard combat computers. The computers, which gathered combat data and stored it for later use so enemies could be defeated faster, were a common sight on mobile suits of the day, but linking them in any way was completely unheard of, since mobile suits weren't intended to be used in pairs. At least, not until these two Gundams.

Defenses inside Geb-1 were utterly inferior to those outside. It was just a matter of scouring the inside of the hollowed-out asteroid looking for hidden enemy mobile suits. Tsunekazu and Tahkruvas did so in near silence, with only a few confirmation signals. They found slots for them as well as the abandoned Guelff-a they had followed to the colony, but only three enemy mobile suits appeared. Still, fighting suit-to-suit was tricky, especially in an industrial colony; there was nothing to warn anybody if that building the one Guelff fell on was containing volatile materials. Such was precisely the case in this situation, where a kick from Flaming Gundam wasted one Guelff's leg and sent it flying into a building containing power couplings, which detonated right away.

"That's bad," Tsunekazu said worryingly. "Without those, a generator somewhere is going to overload, and I doubt even these Gundams can survive something like that."  
"How long do we have?" Tahkruvas frantically asked.

"Two hours, I believe," replied Tsunekazu, the concern only escalating in his voice. Just as he said that, something caught his eye on his monitor. Turning to look, he saw someone standing near an almost fortress-like building, waving his arms.

"Try and get the _Astral_ out of here, fast!" barked Tsunekazu. "I'm going to pick up that guy over there."

"Hurry up!" shouted Tahkruvas as he sped off in Flaming Gundam, leaving Tsunekazu to head the other way, in the direction of the fellow in distress. Arriving there, he set the Black Gundam down on one knee, slipping its left hand down so the person (who looked to be a young man of about 18) could climb onto it. He pulled the hand up to the chest area and opened the cockpit.

"Jump in!" Tsunekazu shouted to him.

"Call your partner back!" the young man shouted back. "We'll need his help to shut this thing down!"


End file.
